Fine Distinctions
by tielan
Summary: They're not normal; they're S.H.I.E.L.D. A friendship spanning ten years, of growth and outgrowing, of unexpected twists and turns and dark horses, and of industrial building parts.


**Fine Distinctions**

Clint walks into HQ and finds it full of kids, where 'kids' means people who aren't old enough to buy a beer. He looks around and spots Coulson up in the aerie, so he makes his way roundabout, watching the new recruits – he figures that's what they are – most of whom are so recently out of ROTC their shoes still shine.

"Any likelies?" He rests his elbows on the railing beside Coulson, mirroring the older man's pose.

"A few," Coulson says. "You know I'm not going to tell you which."

Clint glances over the four dozen or so new recruits collecting their IDs and badges from the bureacracy. "Who's taking the bets on the first to wash out?" He figures the blond with the farmboy face, the girl with the ponytail, and the girl who turned up to her first day at SHIELD in four inch heels are going to be the first three.

Coulson gives him a stern look. "You shouldn't bet on the recruits."

He doesn't laugh in Coulson's face. The man is a good handler – not that Clint has much of an idea what a bad handler looks like – but he's stiff as a plank in some respects. "It's a free country."

"Yes, it is." The smile is faint but satisfied. "But Fury's decided you're going to be one of their instructors. So you shouldn't bet on the recruits."

* * *

A week later they get the Agents-In-Training out into the field, and fourteen have already washed out – one of them Miss Four-Inch Heels. Clint didn't put down a bet, but he figures he's allowed his opinion. He's still pretty sure about the FarmBoy, but Miss Ponytail is proving something of a dark horse.

The game is hide-and-seek in an abandoned chain of warehouses out Houston way. It's set up as a training ground – multilevel, assorted visibility, maze-like corridors, and hellish to navigate. It's a lesson in what can go utterly, absolutely wrong as a SHIELD agent – and what it can cost you.

Within fifteen minutes, four AITs are already 'dead'. Humiliating, but not fatal. Failing this scenario doesn't wash them out – one AIT out of one hundred makes it from one end to the other without being caught – but the length of time they stay 'alive' goes in their scores.

An hour later, Clint's dispatched half the recruits. He'd say he did it without breaking a sweat, only it's a hundred-and-five outside and the air-conditioner that was working perfectly when they arrived at the complex this morning is acting up.

Three hours later, he's caught the second-last of them – a tiny Asiatic girl from Seattle whose curses blister the air when he 'buzzes' her vest with his laser-tag rifle.

"You kiss your momma with that mouth, kiddo?"

She snorts. "My dad kisses my momma with that mouth, sir."

Clint shakes his head and jerks a thumb at the nearby 'exit' leading outside, by which AITs get out of the game once they're dead.

"Coulson, this is Barton. I've got a count of twenty-seven, which means there's still one in the rigging." And it's the dark horse, Miss Ponytail.

"Actually, no," Coulson says. "Number twenty-eight is here with me in the meeting room, making herself a cup of coffee."

_What the fuck?_

When Clint strides into the briefing room ten minutes later, he finds Miss Dark Horse Ponytail sitting opposite Coulson with a mug of coffee and an air vent grating on the table before her.

"The rules said 'make your way from one end of the complex to the other, staying within the warehouses at all times'," she states. "I filled the mission parameters."

It's a fine distinction to make – arguable, but clever.

"We may have to adjust the rules," Coulson admits. "Or put some grilles in the ducting."

Clint glares at the girl who stares back at him, her eyes blue and very direct. If she's triumphant at having completed the mission, it doesn't show in her demeanour. She's got a good control of herself for someone her age – at least, Clint corrects himself, for someone as young as her who had a normal childhood. He presumes her childhood was normal, anyway. He had a look through the background files on the recruits after the second week, and while he doesn't remember her specific file, he doesn't remember anyone's background standing out.

It might be time for a second glance.

"Since the test was also intended to determine how you put field skills into action, you'll be running it again on your next day off." And it'll be harder – because it'll be just her and Clint and now he has an idea of how her mind thinks.

She winces a little but doesn't protest. "Yes, sir."

* * *

Miss Dark Horse turns out to have a name – Maria Hill. She gives him a run for his money in the Warehouse scenario, but Clint still takes her down in the end. And after that, both Clint and Coulson keep an eye on her.

* * *

Coulson claims he doesn't know who named the scenario 'the Kobayashi Maru', but the rumour mill claims it was Coulson himself. Clint doesn't believe that for a moment – if Coulson had named the scenario, it would have been 'Valkyrie Down.'

It's still a pretty hopeless scenario.

Four agents dead, a list of undercover agents out in the open, a hard call on a worse situation with the possibility of a global crisis. And at the end of the scenario, one question: _What do you do?_

The first thing anyone does is damage control.

"Release multiple other lists with the agents' real names paired with the names of other people in the organisations they're working for. Tout them all as the 'real' list."

Clint blinks, matching Coulson in the interrogation room where Hill is answering the quiz. That's a new one.

Coulson arches his brows. "Misdirection and misinformation?"

"Clouding the waters. At best we'll buy them a moment's hesitation, at worst we might manage to take out a few extra terrorists with us."

It's not a bad plan. "Okay. What next?"

"Make contact with any of the compromised agents to determine if they can get out from undercover. There'll always be another terrorist group to be infiltrated; but you can't replace that kind of experience. Activate any agents in the area to hunt the list down and determine where it's headed and who it's being sold to. And execute the traitor."

"That's a harsh judgement."

"They made a worse one when they handed the list over," she says, and there's no mercy in her voice at all. That's one thing that's become clear about Hill; she believes firmly in loyalty – to the cause, to the organisation, to the people around her.

The door behind Clint opens to allow Nick Fury entry into observation. "How's she doing?"

"Well, she's running through agents like a hot knife through butter, but she did come up with a workable smokescreen."

"That's a good one." Fury says when Clint explains her idea. He listens for a few moments as she answers more questions. "She's seeing the big picture."

"She'll make a better handler than field agent, sir. She's got more twists than a Rubix cube."

Fury eyes him, mildly amused. "I'm not sure I want to know what you're saying, Agent Barton. Other than that we're not all of us suited to the field."

* * *

Four AITs are deemed good enough to train with Clint – by which SHIELD means they've got the cold necessary to make good snipers.

It takes a certain emotionlessness to shoot someone from a long way away. Military snipers are trained to it, and even then it takes a toll; Clint came to it through hard need, brutal survival, and a certain ruthlessness.

At least SHIELD always tells him the why – which allows him some leeway in making calls.

Heigel shoots without ever asking why, as though there's nothing for him but the target and the shot. He undertakes the simulated missions the same way; straight as the path of a bullet. Clint is uncomfortably reminded of how he was before SHIELD dusted him off, and tries to give the young man balance. He's not sure he'll succeed, but it's worth trying at least.

Corwith does the first two weeks of training then bows out. "_Sorry, sir,_" he says when he hands back his sniper rifle. "_I can't divorce myself—This isn't me._" Coulson reassures him; he'll do well elsewhere in SHIELD – somewhere where he doesn't have to kill people he doesn't know on someone else's say-so.

Singh does her planning, sets up for the shot, and makes the call on her own judgement. She doesn't ask why, but she doesn't always take the shot either. Perfect sniper material, Clint can get her training she needs to hone her skills, and earmarks her for the Indian-Pakistani offices.

And then there's Hill. Her shooting is perfect, she takes orders like a soldier born, and she'll make the call on her own judgement. Of course, she always wants to know what and why and where and how, and in three of the five exercises, she also presents an alternative plan of attack for getting the results they wanted – at least one of them put together on the fly.

This young woman is not a follower.

Coulson sighs as he surveys Hill's alternative plans - meticulously researched, very practical, and possibly even workable. "Teach her what you can. We'll specialise her to start with, branch her out as she goes."

"She'd make a good sniper," Clint says looking at the schematics of a street, marked with lines of sight and Hill's blocky, blunt handwriting. "She'll make a better leader."

* * *

He's surprised to see a familiar ponytail in the bar, and slides into the seat next to hers.

"Come here often?"

Hill gives him the finger without ever looking away from the screen. "Off-duty, watching the game."

"Tell me you're not a Patriots fan."

She looks at him deadpan. "I'm not a Patriots fan."

"You're not a very good liar either."

"Boston's nearly as close as New York back home," comes the reply. "And there's a game and I didn't want to watch it in my apartment. Although I at least thought this place would be work-free."

Clint taps the mobile phone she carries on her hip. "No rest for the wicked."

"Or those trying to keep the wicked in check," she murmurs, then turns to look at him. "Why did you come over to the dark side?"

He doesn't pretend not to know what she means. His history - his adult history – is on public record in SHIELD, and any AIT worth her salt would have done a check on him when he was assigned to them as one of their trainers. "The pay was better?"

"If it was just pay you wouldn't be training us, you'd be out shooting someone for SHIELD."

"Maybe I like torturing you."

"If you don't want to explain yourself, Barton – and you're under no obligation to do so – then just say it."

She may be an agent newly-minted, but she already sounds like command. Clint huffs with laughter. Give her a few years and she'll be the terror of SHIELD – and she'll know the details of his history that got scrubbed from the lower security clearances. He like the woman, but he thinks it wouldn't be particularly comfortable to have her knowing his secrets.

The barman brings his beer and he tilts the mouth of the bottle in her direction. "I don't want to talk about it."

"See, that wasn't so hard." Her eyes slant mockingly at him before returning to the screen where a Pats runner has just intercepted a pass and is making a sprint for the TD line.

"So what's your reason for turning to the dark side?"

Hill shrugs. "They had cookies."

* * *

The mission goes to hell shortly after midnight.

Clint packs his rifle away with the swiftness borne of familiarity. "I'm going in," he tells Coulson grimly.

"Backup's on the way—"

"No time," he says. "In twenty minutes that drive will be gone along with our proof against al need it."

"Hawkeye, Command, if this is about Agent Mithley—"

"This is about getting the job done, Command. I'll do my part and you do yours."

The silence on the other end of the line disapproves, but Clint long since stopped worrying about that. His opinion may not be as good or as measured as Coulson, but it's still his opinion. Apparently it's a point that every field agent comes to sooner or later – the decision not to always abide by their handler.

Some survive on their own wits. Others don't.

"I'm sending the Dark Horse up to cover you, then," Coulson says after a moment.

"Copy that."

Hill's been in a number of missions now, two successful, one a complete failure, and one which she managed to retrieve to the point where they got half the objective and are better placed for a second try.

Her status as an agent is solid, now what she needs is the experience in the field. Even if she doesn't stay in the field, she needs to know how it works, what happens, how things look down on the ground. And there's always the possibility that the skills she learns here will be needed back in the field again.

In SHIELD, payscale matters less than getting the job done.

He lets himself trust in the training he gave her, in the cool head that's earned her the nickname of 'Ice Princess' among the other AITs, in the instincts that brought her out on this mission.

_If you can't trust your own instincts,_ Coulson told him the first time, _then what good are you to SHIELD? Just be prepared to back them up._

Clint trusts his instincts about Maria.

* * *

It's been years since he saw the inside of one of these cells as anything but an officer of SHIELD. Well, he's still an officer of SHIELD, although it's questionable as to how much longer he's going to be one.

But, sweet and holy mother of God, what else was he supposed to do?

When the door swings open, he's expecting Coulson. Fury, maybe. He's not expecting Maria.

"They sent you to interrogate me?"

"I sent myself to ask you why," she replies as she settles herself on the other side of the cell. "Because I trusted your call against Coulson's and I think I deserve to know."

He leans back. "You know Romanoff and I have been dancing around each other for years."

"A fine romance with no kisses," she quips.

"Do you have money down?" Clint knows there are books somewhere – he's never asked to see them because he doesn't want to know. Some things will never be private from SHIELD operatives, but he'll keep his…whatever it is he has with Natasha Romanoff as low-key as possible until the lid gets blown off it.

Which might very well be right now.

"I never bet on a sure thing," Maria retorts. "And you're avoiding the question."

He grins, before sobering. "The last few times our paths crossed… She's showing indecision. Signs of hesitation. It's not an easy life for a solo operative and she's been solo for at least a dozen years."

"She killed seven agents the last time SHIELD's path crossed with hers."

"And she's one of the best."

"I could have shot her through the heart."

"And yet you didn't." Clint faces her, arching his brows. "So why's my judgement in question and yours isn't?"

"One. I'm a junior agent. You outrank me. Two. I'm not male."

"I think we've noticed that."

"Meaning I don't have a cock to do my thinking for me."

Outrage spikes, sending his temper to boiling point. "Is that what they think happened?"

"It's a possibility that can't be dismissed. They trained her to short-circuit men's brains," Maria says bluntly. "She's the bait, the hook, and the knife all in one package. You know that. It doesn't stop you from being caught up in it."

"So what's your excuse?"

"Bad judgement?" She shrugs. "Maybe I believe in second chances."

Clint snorts. "Better watch your ice cloak, Hill, I think it's slipping."

Her PDA goes off before she can make a retort, and she checks it with a grimace. "Coulson. Probably for debriefing."

"It was the right choice to make," Clint says as Maria climbs to her feet. It was the only choice he could make. SHIELD hauled him out and gave him a second chance, and he terminated more than a few of their agents in his previous line of work. Why shouldn't Romanoff get a second chance, too?

She taps on the window and the guards open the door for her. But she pauses with one hand on the door.

"For the record, Barton, I think you're thinking with your dick." Clint stares at her, anger flaming up beneath his breastbone at the unexpected betrayal. "It's understandable," she continues coolly, "you're a guy with all working parts. But the fact that you're thinking with your dick doesn't mean you're not right about her, too. _That's_ why I didn't take the shot."

The door snicks closed behind her, neatly cutting off the conversation.

"Fucker," Clint mutters at the closed door. "I'll be damned."

* * *

One wouldn't imagine that being tucked behind the neon lighting of a strip club was particularly peaceful.

"Do I want to know how you found this place?"

"It's okay, Dad," she says mockingly, "I never worked here." The flashing sign briefly illuminates the tight, tired planes of her face.

"I mean, I can see the attraction," Clint continues as though she hadn't spoken at all. "Glaring lights, constant noise, drunk idiots in the parking lot…"

"Invisibility, I can't hear my phone ring, and there's always a fight to be had if I feel like it," she counters.

"God, you're a piece of work, Hill."

"That's not God's fault." She twitches her fingers at him for the bottle and he hands it over.

Listening to the steady pound of the music inside the club and letting it fall over him like rain, the scary part is that he's beginning to see the attraction of this place as a hidey-hole. Of course, that could be the whiskey doing his thinking for him. Not that he's complaining. The day started off shit and got increasingly crappy, culminating in the discovery of the body of one of their longtime agents floating in a local river.

"We'll get the bastards who killed her."

It sounds like a promise. Coming from Hill it probably is.

Clint takes the bottle back and lets the whiskey burn down his throat – decent stuff, but, most importantly, intoxicating. "You know, if I died tomorrow, the only people who'd care would be SHIELD agents."

"It's not uncommon in the business," she says after a moment. "We're insular."

"You've got your family upstate."

"I have relatives." Her voice is flat, making the distinction very plain. "Although I doubt my dad would care."

"Agent Carter would."

"We have a bet going on who'll kick the bucket first. Me on a mission, or she from old age."

"Did I mention that you're a piece of work?"

"She said it first!"

"And that makes it okay?"

"Less macabre, maybe."

They sit in silence for a while, passing the bottle back and forth without words. Clint won't venture to guess what she's thinking, but he's thinking about people who are important to him – _family_, as compared to _relatives_ of whom he has none, unless his brother's still kicking around somewhere.

"Bottle's nearly empty," she says after a while.

He glances over at her, the sharp face briefly lit orange by the neon stripper's ass. "If I had a list of people I wanted informed when I died, you'd be on it."

Under other circumstances, she's probably say something droll and faintly sarcastic. But it's been that kind of a day and both their defenses are down. She snorts, sighs, and smiles – a wry twist of her mouth.

"Ditto."

* * *

Natasha frowns as Clint takes down Maria's letter of recommendation from Peggy Carter and puts up the 'trophy' he got made for this occasion.

"I'd heard of animal heads displayed on walls, but never industrial building parts."

Clint steps back to survey his handiwork, then steps back in to tilt the trophy backing a little to the left, and to polish a fingerprint smudge off the words:

_Lieutenant Maria Hill  
(a.k.a. "The Dark Horse")  
Despoiler Of SHIELD Training Facilities_

"It's an air conditioning vent cover, and a private joke."

* * *

Another game. Another bar. Another meeting.

She doesn't wear the ponytail now. He's no longer the senior agent. But there's a game playing on the TV and Clint's watching it as she slips into the seat beside him. It's one of the few channels not replaying the clips of the fight between the Chitauri and the 'Avengers', although the scrolling newslines across the bottom continue to display the headlines as the media scrambles to dig up anything they can on these mysterious superheroes who saved the world.

"I came alone and unarmed," she says as she leans against the bar. "Guess you couldn't do the same?"

Natasha and Cap sit at a table on the other side of the bar, their billed caps doing a little to cover their faces, but not enough to disguise them from a trained SHIELD agent.

"I tried to talk them out of it." Clint doesn't feel like fencing words with Maria right now. Not after the days behind him, not with the days before him. "How bad is it?"

"You stopped the invasion. SHIELD has a new mandate. Fury's happy he got his superhero team after all, and the Council is trying to find a suitable knife with which to stab him in the back."

Clint eyes her. From outside SHIELD it would have been logical for Fury's 2IC to wield the knife. But what might be logical for Fury's 2IC is illogical for Maria with her ferocious loyalty and her dangerous mind. "I hope you've still got the video."

Now she grins – that fierce, feline smirk of triumph she only started showing when she made Lieutenant – and only among people she trusts. "Of course." Then she sobers. "The memorial will be on Sunday."

He sets his elbows on the bar and rakes his hands through his hair. "Am I welcome?"

"If you want to come, come. If you want to hide and cower, hide and cower. But don't ask if you're _welcome_."

"Right." Clint feels bitterness rise. "Because the guy responsible for the deaths of forty-seven SHIELD personnel…"

"Has been sent back to his home planet as a war criminal. Whether he is tried for his crimes is another matter, but…" Maria nods at the barman as he brings her a cider. "You were the pawn, Clint. We've got provisions for coercion. And this isn't even the usual kind of 'we'll kill your family if you don't comply with our directives' coercion. This is…subversion."

"I know exactly what the fuck it is," he snarls. "Don't _civilise_ it, Maria!"

"But civilising things is what we do at SHIELD," she says, unflinching, unrelenting. "We're the line between the polite and the brutal."

"A fine distinction," he sneers.

"But necessary." She doesn't raise her voice. "I'd have shot you in the tunnel, Clint. I'd have regretted it, but I'd have done it."

"If you'd done it, a few more people would be alive today."

"And at least one would be dead," she says and her gaze holds his, direct as the girl she was ten years ago when she sipped tea over a briefing room table. "I would have preferred to stop Loki, Clint, but I'm glad you're not dead."

"Coming from you, that's nearly a declaration of undying love."

She rolls her eyes at the flippancy. "You're welcome."

Overhead, the game plays on. Throughout the bar, the patrons chatter. Out in the city, the clean-up continues. And Earth trembles with the knowledge that they're not alone in the universe anymore, and that it might be their undoing.

The universe is bigger than they understand, and SHIELD is there to stand between Earth and the unknown. That's what it was created for; that's what they'll do – or die trying.

"Thanks for being willing to kill me."

He needs to say it. And she needs to hear that she did the right thing; not because she questions it, but because Clint knows that doing the right thing isn't always something that people appreciate.

Blue eyes meet his, steady and wry. "Anytime."

It's not a conversation for normal people, but they're not 'normal' – they're SHIELD.

**fin**


End file.
